Rachel hiked her skirt above her knees to make the pedalling easier and to keep the thin, diaphanous material from becoming snagged in the greasy chain. She'd known she was going to pay a call on Sahlah Malik when she'd dressed this morning, so she probably should have worn something more suitable to a long bicycle ride in the late afternoon. But the length of the skirt she'd chosen favoured her best features—her ankles—and Rachel was a young woman who knew that, having been given so little to work with in the looks department by the Almighty, she had to accentuate what positives she had. So she regularly wore skirts and shoes that flattered her ankles, always hoping the casual gazes that fell upon her would overlook the mess of her face.
She'd heard every word in the book applied to her in her twenty years: Homely, arse-ugly, bagged out, and grotty were the usual adjectives. Cow, mare, and sow were the nouns of choice. She'd been the butt of jokes and of ceaseless bullying throughout her schooldays, and she'd early learned that for people like her, life presented three clear choices: cry, run away, or learn to fight back. She'd chosen the third, and it was her willingness to take on all comers that had won her Sahlah Malik as a friend.
Her best friend, Rachel thought. Through thick and through thin. They'd had the thick of it since they were nine years old. For the past two months, they'd had the thin. But things were going to change for the two of them. Rachel was nothing if not certain of that.
She teetered up the slope of Church Road, past St. John's graveyard where the flowers drooped from their stalks in the heat. She followed the curve by the railway station's grime-soaked walls and panted up the sharp acclivity that led to the better neighbourhoods with their rolling lawns and leafy streets. This section of the town was called The Avenues, and Sahlah Malik's family lived on Second, a five-minute walk from the Greensward, that stretch of perfect lawn beneath which two rows of beach huts perched above the sea.
The Maliks’ house was one of the grander residences in the neighbourhood, with wide lawns, gardens, and a small pear orchard where Rachel and Sahlah had shared childhood secrets. It was very English: tile-cladded, half-timbered, and diamond-paned in the fashion of another century. Its worn front door was studded with iron, its multiple chimneys were reminiscent of Hampton Court, and its detached garage—tucked at the back of the property—resembled a medieval fortress. To look at it, one would never guess that it was less than ten years old. And while one might conclude that its inhabitants were among the wealthiest people in Balford, one would also never guess that those same inhabitants took their origin in Asia, in a land of mujahidin, mosques, and figh.
Rachel's face was beaded with perspiration by the time she bumped over the kerb and cracked open the front gate. She gave a sigh of pure pleasure as she passed beneath the fresh-scented coolness of a willow tree. She stayed there a moment, telling herself it was to catch her breath but all the while knowing it was also to plan. In her twenty years, she'd never gone to the home of any recently bereaved who'd been dealt her bereavement in such a fashion as had her friend. And now she had to concentrate on what to say, how to say it, what to do, and how to act. The last mistake she wanted to make was to put a foot wrong with Sahlah.
Leaving her bike propped against a garden urn abloom with geraniums, Rachel plucked the wrapped package from her basket and advanced on the front door. Carefully, she sought the best opening remarks. I'm so terribly sorry … I came as soon as I could … I didn't want to phone ‘cause it seemed so impersonal …This changes things awfully … I know how you loved him. …
Except that last was a lie, wasn't it? Sahlah Malik hadn't loved her intended husband at all.
Well, it was no matter now. The dead couldn't come back to demand an accounting of the living, and there was very little point to dwelling upon her friend's lack of feeling for a man who'd been chosen from complete strangers to be her spouse. Of course, he wouldn't be her spouse now. Which nearly made one think … But no. Rachel forced all speculation from her mind. With her package tucked under her arm, she rapped on the door.
It swung open under her knuckles. As it did so, the unmistakable sound of cinematic background music rose over voices speaking a foreign tongue in the sitting room. The language was Urdu, Rachel guessed. And the film would be yet another catalogue purchase made by Sahlah's sister-in-law, who doubtless sat on a cushion in front of the video player in her usual fashion: with a bowl of soapy water in her lap and dozens of her gold bangles piled into it for a thorough wash.
Rachel wasn't far off the mark. She called out, “Hullo? Sahlah?” and ventured to the sitting room doorway. There she found Yumn, the young wife of Sahlah's brother, seeing not to the care of her copious jewellery, but rather to the mending of one of her many dupattās. Yumn was sewing industriously upon the hem of this scarf, and she was making an inexpert hash of the effort.
She gave a little shriek when Rachel cleared her throat. She threw her hands up and let the needle, the thread, and the scarf fly in three different directions. She was, unaccountably, wearing thimbles on every finger of her left hand. These flew off as well. “How you frightened me!” she exclaimed energetically. “Oh my goodness, my goodness, Rachel Winfield. And on this of all days, when nothing on earth should discompose me. The female cycle is a delicate thing. Has no one told you that?”
Sahlah had always referred to her sister-in-law as born for RADA but bred for nothing. The former certainly appeared to be the truth. Rachel's entry had hardly been surreptitious. But Yumn seemed willing to milk it for whatever power its meagre spotlight offered. She was shining this light on her “female cycle,” as she called it, and she used her hands to cradle her stomach in the event that Rachel failed to catch her meaning. This was hardly likely. If Yumn ever thought or spoke of anything besides her intention of achieving a third pregnancy—within thirty-seven months of marriage and before her second son was eighteen months old—Rachel wasn't aware of it.
“Sorry,” Rachel said. “I didn't mean to startle you.”
“I do hope not.” Yumn looked about for her scattered sewing. She squinted at the scarf, using her good right eye and closing the left one, whose wandering she generally hid by draping a dupattā to cast a shadow over it. When she seemed intent upon returning to her work and ignoring Rachel indefinitely, Rachel spoke again.
“Yumn, I've come to visit Sahlah. Is she about?”
Yumn shrugged. “She's always about, that girl. Although whenever I call for her, she goes stone deaf. She needs a proper beating, but there's nobody willing to give her one.”
“Where is she?” Rachel asked.
“‘Poor little thing,’ they think,” Yumn continued. “‘Leave her be. She's grieving.’ Grieving, mind you. What an amusing thought.”
Rachel felt alarmed at this remark, but out of loyalty to Sahlah she did her best to hide it. “Is she here?” she asked patiently. “Where is she, Yumn?”
“She's gone upstairs.” As Rachel turned from the sitting room, Yumn added, “Where she's prostrate with mourning, no doubt,” with a malicious chuckle.
Rachel found Sahlah in the bedroom at the front of the house, the room that had been fitted out for Yumn's two small boys. She stood at an ironing board, where she was folding a mound of freshly dried nappies into perfect, neat squares. Her nephews—a toddler of twenty-seven months and his younger brother—lay in a single cot near the open window. They were fast asleep.
Rachel hadn't seen her friend for a fortnight. Their last words hadn't been pleasant ones, so despite her rehearsal of prefatory remarks, she felt gawky and overcome with awkwardness. This sensation didn't arise only from the misunderstanding that had grown between them, however. Nor did it arise from the fact that in entering the Maliks’ house, Rachel was aware of walking into another culture. Instead, it rose from the acute appreciation she had—refreshed each time she looked at her friend—of the physical differences between herself and Sahlah.
Sahlah was lovely. In deference to her religion and to the wishes of her parents, sh
e wore the modest shalwār-qamīs. But neither the baggy trousers nor the tunic that hung below her hips managed to detract from her looks. She had nutmeg skin and cocoa eyes, with lashes that were thick and long. She wore her dark hair in one dense plait that hung to her waist, and when she raised her head as Rachel said her name, wispy curls like cobwebs fell round her face. The sole imperfection she possessed was a birthmark. It was strawberry in colour and strawberry in shape, high on her cheekbone like a tattoo. It darkened perceptibly when her eyes met Rachel's.
Rachel started at her full view of Sahlah's face. Her friend looked ill, and Rachel immediately forgot everything she'd rehearsed. Impulsively, she held out the gift she'd brought. She said, “This is for you. It's a present, Sahlah,” and at once felt like a miserable fool.
Slowly, Sahlah brushed the wrinkles from a nappie. She made the first fold in the material, lining up the corners with intense concentration.
Rachel said, “I didn't mean any of it. What do I know about love anyway? Me, of all people. And I know even less about marriage, don't I? Especially when you consider my circumstances. I mean, my mum was married for about ten minutes once. And she'd done it for love, according to her. So there you have it.”
Sahlah made two more folds in the nappie and placed it on the pile at the end of the ironing board. She walked to the window and checked on her nephews. It seemed a needless thing to do, Rachel thought. They were sleeping like the dead.
Rachel winced at the mental figure of speech. She had—she absolutely had—to avoid using or even thinking that word for the duration of her visit to this house. She said, “I'm sorry, Sahlah.”
“You didn't need to bring a gift,” Sahlah replied in a low voice.
“Do you forgive me? Please say that you forgive me. I couldn't bear it if you won't forgive me.”
“You don't need to apologise for anything, Rachel.”
“That means you don't forgive me, doesn't it?”
The delicately carved bone beads of Sahlah's earrings clicked together as she shook her head. But she said nothing.
“Will you take the present?” Rachel asked. “When I saw it, I thought of you. Open it. Please.” She wanted so much to bury the acrimony that had coloured their last conversation. She was desperate to take back her words and her accusations because she wanted to be back on her old footing with her friend.
After a moment of reflection, Sahlah gave a gentle sigh and took the box. She studied the wrapping paper before she removed it, and Rachel was pleased to see her smile at the drawings of tumbling kittens in a tangle of wool. She touched a fingertip to one of them. Then she eased the ribbon off the package and slid her finger beneath the Sellotape. When she had the top off the package, she lifted out the garment and ran her fingers along one of its golden threads.
As a peace offering, Rachel knew she had chosen well. The sherwani coat was long. Its collar was high. It offered respect to Sahlah's culture as well as to her religion. Worn with trousers, it would cover her completely. Her parents—whose good will and understanding were essential to Rachel's plans—could only approve. But at the same time, the coat underscored the value that Rachel placed upon her friendship with Sahlah. It was silk, liberally threaded with strands of gold. Its price declared itself everywhere, and Rachel had dipped deeply into her savings to pay for the garment. But that was of no account if it brought Sahlah back to her.
“The colour's what caught my eye,” Rachel said. “Burnt sienna's perfect with your skin. Put it on.” She gave a forced little laugh as Sahlah hesitated, her head bent to the coat and her index finger circling the edge of one of its buttons. Real horn, those buttons, Rachel wanted to say. But she couldn't get the words out. She was too afraid. “Don't be shy, Sahlah. Put it on. Don't you like it?”
Sahlah placed the coat on the ironing board and folded its arms as carefully as she had done the nappies. She reached for one of the dangling ornaments on her beaded necklace, and she held it like a talisman. “It's too much, Rachel,” she finally said. “I can't accept it. I'm sorry.”
Rachel felt sudden tears well in her eyes. She said, “But we always … We're friends. Aren't we friends?”
“We are.”
“Then—”
“I can't reciprocate. I haven't the money, and even if I had …” Sahlah went back to folding the garment, letting her sentence hang.
Rachel finished it for her. She'd known her friend long enough to realise what she was thinking. “You'd give it to your parents. You wouldn't spend it on me.”
“The money. Yes.” It's what we generally do was what she didn't add. She'd said it so often over the eleven years of their friendship—and she'd repeated it endlessly since first making Rachel aware of her intentions to marry a Pakistani stranger chosen by her parents—that there was no need for her to tack the sentence on to the declarations she'd already made.
Before coming to the house, Rachel hadn't considered the possibility that her visit to Sahlah might actually make her feel worse than she'd been feeling for the last few weeks. She'd seen her future as a form of syllogism: Sahlah's fiancé was dead; Sahlah was alive; ergo, Sahlah was free to resume her position as Rachel's best friend and the dearest companion of her future life. Apparently, however, this wasn't to be.
Rachel's stomach churned. She felt light in the head. After everything she'd done, after everything she'd known, after everything she'd been told and had loyally kept to herself because that's what friends did when they were best friends, right …?
“I want you to have it.” Rachel strove for the sort of tone one used when paying a visit to a house where death had paid a visit first. “I just came to say that I'm most awfully sorry about … well, about your … loss.”
“Rachel,” Sahlah said quietly. “Please don't.”
“I understand how bereft you must be. Despite your having known him for so short a time, I'm sure you must have come to love him. Because—” She could hear her voice tightening. It soon would be shrill. “Because I know you wouldn't marry anyone you didn't love, Sahlah. You always said you'd never do that. So it only stands to reason that when you first saw Haytham, your heart just flew to him. And when he put his hand on your arm—his damp, clammy hand—you knew he was the one. That's what happened, isn't it? And that's why you're so cut up now.”
“I know it's hard for you to understand.”
“Except you don't look cut up. At least not about Haytham. I wonder why. Does your dad wonder why?”
She was saying things she didn't mean to say. It was as if her voice had a life all its own, and there was nothing she could do to bring it under control.
“You don't know what's going on inside me,” Sahlah declared quietly, almost fiercely. “You want to judge me by your own standards, and you can't because they're different to mine.”
“Like I'm different to you,” Rachel added, and the words were bitter. “Isn't that right?”
Sahlah's voice softened. “We're friends, Rachel. We've always been and we'll always be friends.”
The assertion wounded Rachel more than any repudiation could have done. Because she knew the statement was just a statement. True though it may have been, it wasn't a promise.
Rachel fished in the breast pocket of her blouse and brought out the crumpled brochure she'd been carrying with her for more than two months. She'd looked at it so often that she'd memorised its pictures and their accompanying pitch for the Clifftop Snuggeries, two-bedroom flats in three oblong brick buildings. As their name suggested, they sat above the sea on the South Promenade. Depending upon which model one chose, the flats had either balconies or terraces, but in either case they each had a view: the Balford pleasure pier to the north or the endless grey-green stretch of sea to the east.
“These are the flats.” Rachel unfolded the brochure. She didn't hand it over because somehow she knew that Sahlah would refuse to take it from her. “I got enough money saved to make the down payment. I could do that.”
“Rachel, won
't you try to see how things are in my world?”
“I mean, I want to do that. I'd see to it that your name—as well as my own—went on the deed. Each month, you'd only have to pay—”
”I can't.”
“You can,” Rachel insisted. “You only think you can't because of how you've been brought up. But you don't need to live like this for the rest of your life. No one else does.”
The older boy stirred in the cot and whimpered in his sleep. Sahlah went back to him. Neither child was covered—it was far too warm in the room for that—so there was no adjustment to make in any bedclothes. Sahlah brushed her hand lightly against the boy's forehead. Asleep, he changed positions, his rump in the air.
“Rachel,” Sahlah said, keeping her eyes on her nephew, “Haytham is dead, but that doesn't end my obligation to my family. If my father chooses another man for me tomorrow, I'll marry him. I must.”
“Must? That's mad. You didn't even know him. You won't know the next one. What about—”
“No. It's what I want to do.”
Her voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking what the firmness of her tone implied. She was saying, The past is dead without saying it. But she'd forgotten one thing. Haytham Querashi was dead as well.
Rachel went to the ironing board and finished folding the coat. She was as careful about the task as Sahlah had been about folding the nappies. She brought the hem up to meet the shoulders. She formed the sides into thin wedges which she tucked into the waist. From the cot, Sahlah watched her.
When she had returned the coat to its box and tapped the lid on it, Rachel spoke again. “We always talked about how it would be.”
“We were little then. It's easy to have dreams when you're just a child.”
“You thought I wouldn't remember them.”
“I thought you'd outgrow them.”
The remark smarted, probably much more than Sahlah intended. It indicated the extent to which she had changed, the extent to which the circumstances of her life had changed her. It also indicated the degree to which Rachel had not changed at all. “Like you've outgrown them?” she asked.